Monthly Archives: January 2011

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The pictures we paint with our words, as well as the words themselves, express our feelings and also create feelings. I believe our metaphors become embedded, our similes become no-longer examined truths and can poison both ourselves and others.

We are good at demeaning and slurring our opponents and making enemies out of adversaries and dangerous revolutionaries out of dissenters. While yelling at each other is easy and sometimes fun, it is seldom serious. Take patriotism. In another decade conservatives told liberals who objected to a lack of civil rights or a war in South East Asia, to either love America or leave it. Now some conservatives (particularly in Texas) love America so much that they threaten to leave it. Patriotism and rhetoric like theology don’t have to make sense or be logically consistent.

This is true of slurs too. Anti-Semites in Germany accused Jews of being the capitalist bankers who exploited poor Germans and the communist revolutionaries trying to destroy the banks. Jews were marrying into the best families and acting like real Germans or Austrians–and were clannish and refused to assimilate. These slurs and stereotypes are still playing out today in America, but now are focused mainly on Asian-Americans. Asians are too aligned with the American Dream and are too focused on achieving. Take Tiger Mothers and the current controversy. It seemed to me to be pretty generational rather than Asian. Read Death of A Salesman and you’ll find the prototype for the drive ‘em to achieve dad.

So far, in our current public examination of rhetoric, most have concentrated on the hyperboles–every conservative is a fascist, every liberal a communist or socialist. Every right that is questioned is threatened by extinction. To limit a bullet magazine is the first step in taking guns away. To question the strong metaphor is to begin to take away our freedom of speech. This is coming from the right which tends to be as pro first Amendment as liberals–except while liberals call abridgement censorship, conservatives call it political correctness. By either name it is slippery slope absolutism.

There is a certain adolescent grandiosity in our charges against each other. A bill or policy is the worst ever, the climate (social, political or the actual climate) is more toxic than ever, the opposition more crooked than ever. At some point the hyperbole becomes not just inflammatory and potentially dangerous, but paradoxically so commonplace that it loses its sting–like profanity that no longer shocks.

Then there is the rhetoric of framing an argument, grabbing a label and controlling the thinking and perception–or at least influencing it. Hence the debate over abortion is Pro Choice (Choice is a good thing) versus Pro Life (Life is another good thing.) The estate tax (estates are large, right?) against the death tax. Oh my God they’re taxing death!

It seems to me that our human journey towards wholeness, a journey never completed, is to see more broadly more expansively the humanity in every human, and to open our eyes and hearts wider. Watching our words, images and metaphors is not an exercise in political correctness or in not telling important truths. It is an exercise in being effective in both our thinking and our communicating.

When speaking, we should ask ourselves just what we want to accomplish or convey. Do we want to shock? Okay, do the Ricky Gervaise and go for the vulgarity. Do we want to hurt? Go for the Gervaise again and slur. Do we want to inform or inflame? Our choices of tone will make a difference–possibly all the difference.

Those of us who are parents know that we can build up expectations and performance with appropriate positive reinforcement or crush creativity under constant criticism. We know that there is a tendency, not certainty, of people living up to expectations or down to expectations. This is true of interpersonal relationships and also of general discourse. Our choices can create cooperation or confrontation. We have power in our choices.

I don’t know if you read the advice columnists. But people are always sharing some problem about someone else and asking if they should confront that person? Well, they should confront the problem but probably not the person. We have made confrontation our default position instead of speaking, talking and reasoning. How I act is influenced by the words I use–even to my self! We don’t talk. We confront. Our politicians always campaign on the promise that they will “fight for us.” Couldn’t they maybe, just sometimes, reason for us or advocate for us? Must it always be a fight? Well, yes, if that’s how we think of it.

Our labels can indeed libel and limit both our vision and the potential of others. We can influence outcomes, not control them, with our conscious choices of how we choose to communicate.

President Obama’s second State of the Union Speech scheduled for Tuesday, January 25 is under fire before he has even uttered one word of it. This was predictable. The State of the Union speech is generally one of the most watched and listened to political speeches. It’s a President’s report card on the accomplishments, the present and future planned initiatives of his administration and his vision for the country. GOP and Democratic presidents are keenly aware that their Democratic and Republican opponents know that State of the Union Addresses boost the stature, prestige, and power of the presidency, and usually bump up the president’s approval rating by a point or two. They also know that the opposition’s response to the speech is feeble, pale, and little watched or counted by Americans. In some cases the opposition response can even backfire. That happened last year when GOP Louisiana governor Bobby Jindahl fumbled and bumbled through what most political observers deemed a mean-spirited, petty retort to Obama.

The history of the State of the Union speech underscores the power to shape policy and bolster the president’s image. President James Monroe announced the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln flatly called for the end of slavery in the rebellious states. This was the prelude to the Emancipation Proclamation he issued a year later. Woodrow Wilson warned of the dangers of impending war in 1913. Franklin Roosevelt outlined the famed Four Freedoms in 1941. Lyndon Johnson unveiled the outlines of his Great Society program to fight poverty in 1965. Bill Clinton unveiled his health care reform plan in 1993. George Bush in his State of the Union speeches in 2002 and 2003 prepped the nation for the Iraq invasion. Presidents quickly latched on to the media to give their State of the Union speech more exposure and political wallop. Calvin Coolidge gave the first radio broadcast in 1923. Truman gave the first televised broadcast in 1947.

The attacks on President Obama before he’s spoken have been partisan, familiar, and absurd. Absurd when GOP Georgia Rep Paul Broun with no inkling of what President Obama would actually say, told a radio caller that he would not sit next to a Democrat during the speech “when Obama spews his venom.” Broun reacted to the Washington DC policy think tank, Third Way’s proposal that Democrats and Republicans mix up their seating during the President’s address. GOP Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell took a different tact from Broun’s loony outburst. He jumped on reports that Obama will call for more increased federal spending on infrastructure, research, and for small business. McConnell blamed Obama’s supposed runaway federal spending for getting the country into the economic mess of the last two years. This of course belies and ignores the political and economic damage that the Bush’s administration’s giveaway to Big Business and the banks, and Wall Street’s push of the economy to near collapse did. But Obama’s renewed call for more strategic spending fits in with the public’s loud demand that the Obama administration refocus its time, talent and energy on jobs and the economy.

Obama has gotten that message, his stimulus measures in the tax cut extension, the high profile appointments of business friendly William Dailey as Chief of Staff, and GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt and Wall Street insider Gene Sperling as key economic advisors, and talks on business and investment during the Chinese President’s state visit put business and the economy at the front of Obama’s front burner.

Obama critics have even reached back a year and picked apart his first State of the Union address and harangued him for allegedly lashing out at Republicans. Business Insider headlined its STOU piece with the question, “A Less Partisan State of the Union Speech?” It scolded Obama for his criticism of the Supreme Court for its conservative majority decision in Citizens United in 2010. The decision opened the floodgate for corporations to pour unlimited dollars into political campaigns with minimal checks and accountability. Major corporations and financial institutions wasted little time in doing that. They poured millions into the mid-term election campaigns. The bulk of money as Obama and the Democrats knew went to corporate friendly GOP candidates and incumbents. In singling out the Court for its politically lethal ruling, Obama did what other presidents have done and that’s use the State of the Union Speech to warn of the threat to Democracy of in this case a court ruling that threatened to turn elections into the exclusive preserve of the super rich.

The shrill warnings that President Obama will give a partisan State of the Union speech makes even less sense this year. Polls show that Americans applaud the president for his even handed, Tucson speech, his willingness to compromise with the GOP in its demand to extend tax cuts for the wealthy, and that Americans overwhelmingly want the Obama administration and Congress to end the rancor and work together on the problems and issues. Expect President Obama to say that on Tuesday.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts national Capitol Hill broadcast radio talk show on KTYM Radio Los Angeles and WFAX Radio Washington D.C. streamed on ktym.com and wfax.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

It is no surprise that former President Reagan’s son, conservative political consultant Michael Reagan would add his unabashed and wildly inaccurate historical revisionism about Reagan with his absolutely ridiculous assertion in a Fox News op-ed piece that dad, Reagan was a “better friend of blacks” than President Obama. Normally that would be the cause for hysterical laughter except that that fits in with the inevitable sanitizing of former President Reagan’s image and legacy as the nation approaches the centennial commemoration of Reagan’s birth in February.

Race is exactly the one issue that Mike can make absolutely no claim to truth about Reagan on. Reagan and Reagan officials waged a by now well-documented open war against civil rights leaders and did everything politically possible to roll back civil rights gains during his eight years in office. That war began months before he took office. At his now infamous presidential kick-off campaign rally at Neshoba, Mississippi in 1980, held virtually a stone throw from where the three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964, Reagan shouted to a lily white crowd that “I believe in states’ rights.” He laced his campaign speech with stock racial code words and phrases, blasting welfare, big government, federal intrusion in state affairs, and rampant federal spending. The message was that if elected he’d not only say and do as little as possible to offend the white South, but actively undermine civil rights. At his first press conference the week after his inauguration, Reagan lashed out at affirmative action programs. He told reporters, “I’m old enough to remember when quotas existed in the United States for purposes of discrimination and I don’t want to see that again.”

That was just the start. During the 1980 presidential campaign, he publicly branded the voting rights act “humiliating to the South.” The implication was that he would not back an extension of the Voting Rights Act when it came up for renewal in 1982. He backed away from that only in the face of strong support from Congressional democrats (and many Republicans).

The checklist of Reagan anti-civil rights initiatives however soon grew to be telephone book thick. They included his gut of the Civil Rights Commission, his attempt to eliminate and slash and burn of an array of federally funded job and training programs, his borderline racist depiction of welfare recipients as “queens,” his stack of the federal judiciary with strict constructionist, states’ rights leaning judges, the wave of Reagan approved Justice Department indictments, prosecutions and harassment of black elected officials, his foot drag on imposing congressional mandated sanctions on then apartheid South Africa, and his repeated mock of civil rights leaders.
The Reagan assault on civil rights was so intense that the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in 1982 issued a lengthy report that meticulously documented the measures the Reagan Administration Justice Department and especially its Civil Rights Division did to stymie and obstruct enforcement of civil rights laws. Then there was his dogged fight to prod the IRS to reverse its decision to deny a tax exemption to all white Bob Jones University in South Carolina in 1982. Reagan backed away from this only after a firestorm of congressional and public outrage at his naked effort to prop up a blatantly segregated institution.

The one civil rights act that Reagan is praised for as an example of his racial enlightenment, the signing of the King Holiday Bill, was anything but that. Reagan staunchly opposed the King Holiday bill. And he did not oppose it as later historical revisionists claim solely for cost reasons, that is that the federal government couldn’t afford to give federal employees another day off. This is the politically palatable cover.
At a press conference October 19 two weeks before he grudgingly signed the bill he quipped that he’d sign it only “since Congress seemed bent on making it a national holiday.” It took every ounce of the congressional bent that Reagan ridiculed to get him to put his signature on the bill. Congress passed the bill with an overwhelming veto-proof majority (338 to 90 in the House of Representatives and 78 to 22 in the Senate).
Reagan didn’t stop at simply voicing reservations about Congress’s action in passing the bill. At the same press conference he also added with a wink and a nod that the jury was still out on whether King was a communist sympathizer or not. Reagan revealed even more of his true thinking about King in a letter to ultra-conservative former New Hampshire governor Meldrim Thompson. He unapologetically told Thompson that the public’s view of King was “based on image, not reality.” Reagan was roundly criticized for besmirching King, and he subsequently publicly apologized to King’s widow, Coretta Scott King. In assailing King, Reagan simply followed the well-worn ultra-conservative and racist script that King was a radical, racial agitator, and a closet communist.
Michael Reagan can absurdly twist history decades later to make his father a paragon of civil rights. But the Reagan record of hostility, obstructionism, and outright opposition to civil rights gains and civil rights leaders stands. This is hardly the action of a “best friend” of blacks.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts national Capitol Hill broadcast radio talk show on KTYM Radio Los Angeles and WFAX Radio Washington D.C. streamed on ktym.com and wfax.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

I may know what it’s like to be a lot of things, but I have no idea what it’s like to be black. The closest I’ve come is when people thought a biracial neighbor and I were sisters, which we were unfortunately not because she would have made one hell of a sister.

Oprah recently ran a clip of a white teenage boy who risked his health by taking some pills to turn himself black. As a black man, he was stopped by police for walking by a school and being denied service in restaurants that were empty. He never experienced that when he was white and stopped taking the pills so he could turn himself back. If nothing else, it was telling.

Although they are the only immigrants to be brought here against their own will and started off with all that negative press, their leaders have done little to dispel any myths. Instead, they have added to them by creating a bandwagon for every slight. Reverend Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson aren’t their friends but their enemies. When they run out whooping and hollering at every injustice against a black person but remain mum about other ethnic group, there’s bound to be a PR disaster. For all I know, they ma be CIA or KGB operatives.

Even though I know a darker skin brings out different expectations than the paler ones, there are things that other members of the black community have done that lead to sabotage. One is their high crime rate given their number and their racism towards each other. The rate of black on black violence is legend as are gangs like the Bloods and the Crips, and there are neighborhoods in seamier parts of town that they have created where even the police are afraid to go. Some say it’s all because of poverty and white oppression and how much harder it is to get a job inside a black skin, but other ethnic groups have been oppressed at some point yet don’t resort to a life of gang affiliation, abandoning their children and crime. Many blacks are successful, so why not more? Why aren’t they hoping and dreaming and leading themselves in any direction they choose?

Nothing lasts forever. Not Sara Lee foods, which is slated to be bought out later this year along with their crumb cakes, nor Office Depot, which may explain why I haven’t seen many lately, nor Borders Books.

Now the Society of Professional Journalists has swung the gauntlet towards Helen Thomas and her journalism award. They didn’t do it. They were merely the messengers. She was the catalyst.

Maybe part of it was her age. Maybe it was that let it all hang out, I’ve lived long enough, so get out of my way, Sonny frame of mind that people reach when they get anywhere beyond 35. I remember my paternal grandmother, who at 103 had Thomas beaten out by about thirteen years. She was very sweet when I was younger and even used to hook rugs for me on a loom. Then she hit one of those milestones, all hell broke loose, the loom went to the attic, and she announced that she was going to say exactly what she thought, and some of it wasn’t very flattering.

So maybe Thomas had been bitten by the same bug last May when she told a rabbi that the “Jews should get the hell out of Palestine and go home” after he asked her if she had any comment on Israel. When he asked her where home was, she said Poland, Germany (the wrong choices) or the United States (one of the better ones.) She was later fired from her job at Hearst Newspapers.

Then in December of that same year, she wrung down the final curtain on her career and that award when she added that the Jews own the media. Helen Thomas is not entitled. She’s senile.

The SPJ was right in nixing the award because it would be like having a Sadaam Hussein Award for curbing inner-city violence or a Mussolini Award for urban planning. It just wouldn’t fly in the face of the messes that some people make.

Sargent Shriver, Tunisia and Martin Luther King are very much in my thoughts today. When I was in Tunisia serving in Peace Corps Sargent Shriver was the director, the founding director of the Peace Corps. While Sargent Shriver died on Tuesday Jan. 18, possibly peace was born in Tunisia–and if so, it was midwived by Dr. King.

With Tunisia in the news this week, I am watching with great interest. My government made one promise to me that it has kept. Before going into the Peace Corps they said that whatever our experience–good or bad–we would forever feel connected to our site and would faithfully read every story in the papers. This was an easy promise for me to keep. Tunisia seldom shows up on our RADAR–except when it hosted the exiled leadership of the PLO and some terrorists blew up a truck outside the oldest continually operating synagogue in the world, on Djerba.

So with the confluence of Shriver’s death, the overthrow of the corrupt kleptocracy that ruled Tunisia and the celebration of Dr. King’s life, a lot of memories, thoughts and feelings come flooding my emotions. I was serving in Tunisia when Dr. King was assassinated. I remember my students not understanding why he was killed, or why JFK had been killed, and exactly three months later, why Robert F Kennedy was assassinated. They also came to wonder about America, our guns and violence.

What made Dr. King’s death particularly poignant to me was a memorial service my Lyce held–some 3,000 students–and the reading of Dr. King’s “I have a dream,” speech in French. The students were clearly moved both by his life and his death.

Then as now Tunisians did not own a lot of guns–certainly not pistols, automatic weapons or assault guns. Many folks had shot guns for hunting, mostly birds and boars. For the most part they have remained unarmed as a society. Yet they just overthrew a cruel autocrat. How could this be, and how does this fit with the National Rifle Associations current rationale that we should be armed in order to fight a possibly tyrannical government?

The people of Tunisia brought down Zine el-Abadine Ben Ali through mass popular protests. All across Tunisia people feeling just fed up with the lies, the governmental thievery, the brutal repression and torture joined together. They won. They made Ben Ali flee to Saudi Arabia, and are now rejecting the old guard and the one extended family that openly controlled nearly 50% of the nation’s wealth. They did this not by killing but by being willing to die.

Dr. King preached and practiced non-violent civil disobedience and whether intentionally or not, this is what has worked in Tunisia–so far. Had the people been armed to the teeth, had they been shooting, almost certainly the army would have responded violently and with overwhelming force. What brought this corrupt regime down was neither ballots nor bullets but the ability of the military to resist having to use its weapons.

Gandhi and King’s doctrines both depended on some decency at the heart of the oppressor. Gandhi didn’t think Britain could be driven out by force of arms but only by some human compassion that would stop the soldiers from killing unarmed civilians, that would make the colonialists wonder, in moments of self-reflection, who was the civilized and who the savage?

So too with Dr. King. It was not violence or riots in our cities that ended legal segregation. Far more it was hearts being changed as stomachs nauseated over pictures of dogs being loosed on peaceful marchers, churches being burned and non-violent protestors having fire hoses turned on them. The brutal changed the hearts of those on the fence. A well-armed civil rights protest movement might have led to slaughter–not victory for anyone.

In Tunisia change came by a kind of passive military coups. The army decided they would not kill their fellow Tunisians. They backed out of the cities. The police, more tied to the regime, went in to control the crowds. When they got too rough, the army moved back in and acted as a buffer.

There is still rioting in the streets. The outcome is still uncertain. Opposing factions and the demonizing of anyone who had anything to do with the old regime could wreck any hope of competency or continuity, but the Tunisian people have, at least, a chance–thanks to the fact that they were not armed sufficiently to pose a threat to the army. Something to think about as we remember Dr. King and Sargent Shriver.
2011 Jonathan Dobrerwww.Dobrer.com

Oh Gail, why was an unarmed black man shot to death by the police this weekend?Were the police fearful that he had a weapon? Oh, yeah, he was naked. Nothing short of deadly force was needed by two strong MALE police officers? There were no batons? No tasers? No beanbag-firing shotgun? They just had to kill him?

This is seldom the standard operating procedure in white Beverly Hills. Is this an isolated incident or the residue of fear, suspicion and racism? Our police chief calls the questioning of this shooting “disappointing.” Not questioning would be outrageous!

P.S. Your statistic on black males in jail is way off. Though the percentage of young black men who have encountered the judicial system is appalling, it is nowhere near 35.5%. That would be over 3 million. The best number available is around 6%. This is still 6 times the percentage of white males. The highest figures seem to be around 16% of black males from 18 to 25 who had dropped out of highschool.

Yes, certainly, local culture plays a part in all this but so do history, racism, education and unequal justice.

Since Bobby Kennedy’s assassination one million Americanshave been killed by domestic gun violence. In anger, by mistake, in the course of robberies and as suicides we have been involved in egregious self-slaughter. Yet our second amendment right to bear arms–from knives to AK47s–are as sacred as the religious services we offer for the souls of the slaughtered.

We cannot even question the sanity of our gun laws–or actually the absence of gun laws. The reason is clear. Americans fear slippery slopes more than guns. A certain segment is terrorized by any limitation on our God-given Second Amendment rights. Any limitation–say against armor-piercing bullets, 30 round plus magazine clips would, they honestly believe, take us to the confiscation of all weapons.

Of course gun rights folks are not the only Constitutional absolutists. Free speech advocates also fear limits could become censorship and our right to express ourselves, our politics, religion or other passions should be nearly absolute. They are even queasy when discussing restricting child pornography, hate speech or exhortations to violence. It is very challenging to have conversations and seek solutions to real problems when faced by the absolutism of slippery slopes.

Now, I am not a gun hater or firearms phobe. I have hunted (for food, not trophies), target shot, skeet shot and was a card-carrying member of the NRA. I withdrew because of their absolutism. In the old days–my younger days–the NRA’s position was that firearms were for self protection, hunting and target shooting. I was okay with that. But then the slippery slope started to appear and reason seemed to erode.

If I feel the need to protect my home or myself, I do not need a Glock or an Uzzi. For the home, nothing s better than a shot gun. You don’t need fine aiming skills only a general direction. If you want to target shoot, again a semi-automatic assault rifle is not the sporting choice–not yet considered for being an Olympic event. If you want to hunt, well, again, the shotgun will bring a goose from the sky, but an assault weapon will not leave you enough goose to cook.

The last straw for me was their opposition, against the lobbying of many police department, to a ban on armor-piecing ammo. Assault weapons and armor-piecing ammo have no legitimate role in hunting or target shooting. They are designed to kill human beings.

Is it possible to have a sane discussion, even debate, around limiting firepower? Doesn’t seem so. Thus these rights will continue to create religious rites of grief and mourning–and tears in human flesh will be both substance and symbol of the tears in our hearts.
2011 Jonathan Dobrerwww.Dobrer.com

Tea Party leaders, Sarah Palin, most of Congress, and of course the NRA can prattle on all day with the empty, self-serving, and false line that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Their stock line used every time some nut case goes nuclear and commits mass carnage. The gun mania crowd never says that if all alleged Tucson triggerman Jared Loughner had was access to a knife, slingshot, bow and arrow, or had to strangle a crowd with their hands that he could never in the few seconds it takes to pull a trigger wipe out dozens.

The hard and bitter reality is that guns, yes, guns, lots of them everywhere, with minimal to no constraints do kill people. We didn’t need a Tucson massacre for the umpteenth tragic time to prove that. The fact that anyone can get a gun is nowhere more evident than Arizona. This is the state that now says folk can carry guns into bars and is even considering letting students pack guns on campuses.

The bottom line is there should be and should have been ages ago the most rigid restrictions on who can own a gun. There have been a bevy of proposals that would apply uniform standards and restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns. And none of them would violate the 2nd Amendment. They’ve all gone up in smoke thanks to the NRA and the gun lobby. The Tucson massacre sadly should but won’t change that.

In truth, the Constitution made this country, and parts of it may break this country, too if we aren’t really careful.

Take the Fourteenth Amendment. If the Founding Fathers had known that women were going to come here just to sire and hatch babies, they would have amended the amendment because adults who don’t pay taxes and don’t fear April 15th are sure to put a pinch on the economy. The posiive thing, though is that they are helping Americans, who generally like to learn only one language, get out and learn another one from the comfort and safety of their own shores.

Then there is the Second Amendment, which raises its hoary old head just about every time someone reads a paper or magazine, watches TV or turns on the Internet. Of course people have the right to bear arms, though which people is now the question especially after the Arizona shootings. Rather than arming the whole country, we should have categories of those who should never own militia of any kind let alone be allowed near a butter knife. They fall into the same category as Jared Loughner, the Arizona shooter, and include those who are deranged, psychotic, unstable, addicted to drugs and alcohol or have had continual scrapes with the law. If these guys want to protect themselves inside their homes, let them do it with some mace. No German Shepherds or bulldogs for them as they may abuse them as well.

People know who they are. Jared Loughner’s teachers knew who he was. They were allegedly afraid of him because they knew what he was capable of doing. It’s unfortunate that no one took them seriously. But hindsight always is 20-20. An amended amendment wouldn’t stop any goofball from owning a gun; it would only make it illegal for them to do so and it may help curb our mean, violent streak in the long run.